Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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That’s what a NYT article told readers this morning. Of course that is not exactly what the article told readers. Instead it said that billionaires received a total of $11.3 million in farm subsidies between 1995 to 2012. This is yet another example where the intent is to mislead people by using large numbers that they are not likely to understand.
In fact, the subsidies paid to billionaires were trivial in terms of the federal budget, spending on the program, or even as income to these billioniaires. (According to the piece, their collective net worth is $316 billion which means that the total payments over this 17 year period would be less than 0.004 percent of their net worth. The subsidies would mean the same to these billionaires as getting $20 over a 17 year period would mean to middle income family with $500,000 in assets.
The merits of the farm subsidy programs are not in any obvious way affected by these payments to billionaires. If the NYT is going to devote a piece to the issue of farm subsidies, the money going to billionaires should not be the main focus.